by Barbara Pym
I went to the unveiling of the Byron memorial plaque in Westminster Abbey. There must have been lots of poets there but, apart from Day-Lewis, I recognised only politicians – Michael Foot and Bob Boothby! Afterwards, the friend I went with and I went to lunch at the Army and Navy Stores – perhaps not quite what one would have chosen as the perfect finish to a romantic and moving experience, but that area is not good for eating places.
We had a ‘Festschrift’ presentation to Daryll Forde a couple of weeks ago – he is retiring from University College London. A volume of essays had been contributed by his old students, called Man in Africa, published by Tavistock. Of course these occasions are never quite as one would make them in fiction, except that one prominent linguist was seen surreptitiously refilling his glass when the presentation was being made. I was also struck by the number of academic women who appeared to have made really no effort at all – obviously none of that agonised ‘But what shall I wear?’ – really an enviable detachment and when will one ever reach it?
I’ve finished a very rough re-doing of that Sweet Dove Died novel about Leonora etc, but what reader would want to identify herself with Leonora? If only one could write about Margaret Drabble-like characters! But I suppose I couldn’t have done, even when I was that age, so.… Perhaps the best thing to do now is to ‘write’ nothing but bibliographies.
All good wishes – Yours ever,
Barbara
31 July. Lunch at the Royal Commonwealth Society with Bob. In the restaurant all those clergymen helping themselves from the cold table, it seems endlessly. But you mustn’t notice things like that if you’re going to be a novelist in 1968-9 and the 70s. The posters on Oxford Circus station advertising Confidential Pregnancy Tests would be more suitable.
11 August. Visit to Jane Austen’s house with Bob. I put my hand down on Jane’s desk and bring it up covered with dust. Oh that some of her genius might rub off on me! One would have imagined the devoted female custodian going round with her duster at least every other day. Then to the site of Steventon Rectory the place of her birth – now a field overgrown with nettles and docks. We went into Steventon Church – very cool inside. Steventon Manor is deserted and overgrown, not beautiful but sad, almost romantic. Such enormous beech trees and that silence – a few miles away the road from Basingstoke to London and the traffic roaring by.
15 August. Longmans returned The Sweet Dove – ‘well written’ – but what’s the use of that.
To Philip Larkin
40 Brooksville Avenue
19 September 1969
Dear Philip,
Thank you so much for two delightful holiday postcards – one from Norwich (bird with no lion above it) and the other from the West of Ireland. I hope your room in Eire was more comfortable than Norwich seems to have been, though perhaps it’s no use the single traveller expecting anything but the worst, as you seem to have found. I’ve twice been to Ireland, 1967 and 1968, and love it. Everyone is so nice you and lots of cups of tea and Guinness, not to mention the beauty of scenery, fuschia hedges and arum lilies. I’ve not been to the North, but was glad to see that Queen’s Univ. Belfast have had the discernment to give you a doctorate. Many congratulations! I cut the piece out of The Telegraph where it appeared in Peterborough but I haven’t yet decided which of your poems it would go best in – I mean, as a resting-place, the Toad work rather than Faith Healing, perhaps?
My sister and I had a very good holiday in Greece, late May–early June. One felt a bit ‘guilty’ going there but Robert Liddell still lives in Athens and I’ve got to the age when I feel I must see friends rather than make protests. Robert wrote the Times obituary of Dame Ivy. Apparently she has left him part of her residuary estate which has touched and pleased him. He had a sentimental, un-Ivyish feeling about it. Yes, those obituaries, as you say! I was shocked at Pamela Hansford-J. turning up half an hour late for dinner and should have imagined that for somebody of that generation one would surely have been most careful to arrive punctually!
I’m glad to see your Jazz writings are to be collected, though I suppose I’d have preferred that Library novel or another volume of poems. I have nearly finished my revising and ‘improving’ of that novel I showed you about a year ago about Leonora. I have cut out a lot of the characters, ruthlessly suppressed (or tried to) all ‘cosiness’ and am now struggling with the last difficult chapters, which are new. Then I shall have to go through it all again to see what further improvements can be made. And after all that will there be any point in offering it to a publisher? One really does wonder! Still I suppose it’s a nice ‘hobby’ for me, like knitting. Next I shall write a lighter academic one and perhaps after that one about the decay of the Anglican church. Some Tame Gazelle has just been done in the Portway Library Association reprints.
We continue to have trouble in staffing our Library at the Institute. A Ghanaian we had was not a success and spent a large part of his day conducting endless telephone calls in his native language (Fanti, I think). Hope you are all right in that respect!
With all good wishes,
Yours ever,
Barbara
40 Brooksville Avenue
10 December 1969
Dear Philip,
It was extremely kind of you to ‘say a word’ to James Wright of Macmillan about my book and I have just taken it along there. (I should explain that their new premises are so near to where I work that it is possible to walk along at lunch time with a manuscript in a shopping bag, thus avoiding the expense and frustration of the pre-Christmas post.) I am not very optimistic about the book’s chances though it is improved, I think, and perfectly publishable if only somebody would have the courage to be unfashionable. I saw a most depressing TV programme on Saturday night about the dire state of fiction publishing. But I am not discouraged really, only fatalistic. I can now see how one might be led to have delusions of grandeur about one’s work, or to develop persecution mania. You say that you are never ‘seen’ anywhere – and I can say that I write but don’t get published!
Thank you very much for your last letter – written in October, when you had just got what sounds like a very splendid ‘new’ car – Vanden Plas Princess, indeed, with Rolls Engine! Hope she continues to please you.
Our work grows all the time. One of my tasks is to cope with review books sent for Africa and I have long discussions with Professor Forde who to send them to. Some of our academics might be surprised at the way they are judged when the criterion is whether they are quick and reliable reviewers. But perhaps what is to me in my narrow sphere a virtue, appears very dreary in the big world, like being ‘a good husband and father’ or ‘a dutiful son’.
I hope nobody has asked you to act the part of Fr Christmas in your new Dr’s robes. They do sound most reasonable at £35. What material are they made of? And is there a floppy hat to go with them? A pity you can’t be photographed in them for your 1969 Christmas card – or perhaps you have been? People are too modest nowadays.
Yours ever,
Barbara
To Bob Smith in Lagos
40 Brooksville Avenue
11 December 1969
Dearest Bob,
The article [‘How Pleasant to Know Miss Pym’ by R. Smith] is most gratifying and soothing to my wounded ego, but providing suitable quotes is going to be difficult. Could you not give me a few clues, e.g. the bit where … and then I would cheerfully copy them out. Hazel may be able to help. I wasn’t offended by anything – though curious to know just how many ‘it so happened’s’ you found – and what you meant by woman’s page or magazine style – making Wilmet say ‘sweet’ instead of ‘agreeable’. The bits I might think most quoteable might not be your choice. But how nice of you to write it and it would be wonderful for both of us if Professor Jeffares would take it for Ariel magazine. Is he the man who edited the paperback selection of Yeats that I have? A far far cry.…
Love,
Barbara
40 Bro
oksville Avenue
26 January 1970
Dearest Bob,
I fear Macmillan will not take The Sweet Dove, but only (they say) because it seems a risk commercially. I have never had a more flattering letter about my work (or even review) than the one James Wright wrote about it. He praised my ‘perfection of taste’ so you can see what is wrong, especially when you read the reviews in the Sundays any week. But how can one be different? Anyway I am going to send it round rather than let it lie at home. And I have even started my academic one about a provincial university [this novel never got beyond the first draft].
‘Miss Austen’ is wrong, of course, because Cassandra was the elder and Jane would be Miss Jane Austen. However, Miss Pym is correct for me if you are going in for that sort of thing.
St Lawrence’s is in the red and numbers dropping all the time. But I hate the idea of ‘meeting in people’s houses’ rather than going to church, as I have seen suggested. Just imagine Sung Mass at 40 Brooksville and Minerva jumping up on the altar and Tom sniffing the sacred vessels.
Much love,
Barbara
To Philip Larkin
40 Brooksville Avenue
1 February 1970
Dear Philip,
I was so delighted to get a copy of All What Jazz and I’m sure I shall gain much knowledge as well as pleasure from it. It’s good of you to remember me! You look somehow different from the poet and novelist in the photograph on the jacket – something in the expression of the eyes or is that too far-fetched? How beautifully arranged the books are, presumably at 32 Pearson Park.
You have sent me so many books since we first, as it were, ‘met’ and I wish I could make some return. That is why I am sending you now this bound copy of A Glass of Blessings – perhaps you can regard it as a bibliographical curiosity, if nothing else, and it is the only such copy in existence.
James Wright couldn’t have been nicer or more flattering about my rewritten version of The Sweet Dove Died but said Macmillan couldn’t offer to publish as it seemed a risky commercial venture. Thank you very much for mentioning my name to him. At least I got a little confidence from his praise, i.e. it appears I can still write even if my type of book is no longer publishable. I have now sent the MS to a friend of mine, Dorothy Eden, an immensely successful writer of thrillers, ‘gothic’ and historical novels, and she is going to ask the advice of her agent, as she has also read and liked it. In the meantime Cape have got Portway Reprints to do Jane and Prudence and Less Than Angels in their Library reprints. They did STG and Ex. Women very nicely.
At the office I am surrounded by books about Africa, many of them ‘marginal’ to our field, and increasing numbers of bibliographies! Daryll Forde, who retired as Prof, of Anthropology at Univ. Coll. London this summer, now comes in to us every day (he is our Director) and makes lots more work, so that everyone has got rather fractious. We are hoping to get some Ford Foundation money to start an information and research center (I’m sure it should have American spelling) but we don’t know yet if it will materialise.
Yours ever,
Barbara
40 Brooksville Avenue
21 March 1970
Dear Philip,
Easter is nearly here and I haven’t yet bought any new clothes – all this anxiety about the skirt length – for people of my age it will be quite all right to wear things that seemed a little too long and are now the perfect mid-length. Did you see the picture of M. Drabble, Olivia M. and others in The Sunday Times? A pitiful group they looked – and what length were they wearing! Bringing culture to the North.
I hope you have been pleased with the reviews of All What Jazz. The ones I’ve seen have been good, though obviously you have shocked some reviewers deeply by your attitude! But of course I agree with you, though I wouldn’t know about jazz. The introduction set me thinking back into my own girlhood – and that winding up of the portable gramophone – and the records – ours were mainly of the bands of the day – Jack Hylton and Jack Payne, and perhaps the odd Ellington – and my own favourite of Noel Coward and Gertrude Lawrence doing that scene from Private Lives. And of course we had ukuleles – that was surely before your time!
While on the nostalgic track – how wonderful to go to All Souls for six months – and may you have absolutely no worries, if such a state is possible. The Oxford Book [P.L. edited the Oxford Book of 20th Century English Verse (1973)] must be a bit nagging, though. How on earth do you decide what to put in? Perhaps it’s a question of taking out poems that haven’t stood ‘the test of time’ (sad, that) and substituting others or do you have to start again from scratch? Helen Gardner is your co-editor, I believe [H.G. edited the New Oxford Book of English Verse (1972)]. What happens if you disagree? As for revisiting places of one’s youth and visiting places one never went to – perhaps the last is best. I wonder if Elliston’s is now full of well dressed ladies having coffee mid-morning? I think the warm green-muffled Cumnor Hills were never as Arnold saw them. But Bagley Wood – ah … I think it belongs to St John’s, doesn’t it, and will have been preserved, bluebells and all.
Thank you for your sympathy about the SDD. Hodder were much of the opinion of James Wright at Macmillan – thought it very well written etc. in perfect taste (damning word?) but said that such books only sold in very small editions. Still, we will try it elsewhere. I certainly don’t think it’s worse than any of my others, but the main characters are perhaps not very sympathetic.
As for the reprinting – it is not Cape themselves who do this. They merely negotiated for me with Chivers of Bath who reprint (in very limited editions) for Libraries, the books not being on sale. The rights do revert to me when the books have been out of print a certain length of time, but what could I do with them myself if I hadn’t got another publisher to do a new novel? It seemed best to let Chivers do them, so that at least they would be available in Libraries and the name of Barbara Pym not totally sunk in oblivion.…
After that I must come to a different sort of end.
All good wishes,
Barbara
Easter Sunday. In St Lawrence’s a fine polish on the bird (sprayed with Pledge by Hilary) especially on neck and claws. In the Hall a strong smell of tomcat, which is, after all, one of the smells of spring.
16 April. Sweet Dove rejected yet again (by Macdonald). Shall call it Leonora by Tom Crampton and send it out again.
29 April. What strikes one in going through the old I.A.I. Fellowship files – the difficulties over marriage – almost like entering a celibate priesthood. H. Beemer (1935) ‘I think that the proper course for Miss Beemer would have been to raise the whole question with the Council before getting married. We have no precedent to guide us in a matter of this kind.’
The terrible illnesses – malaria, chiefly.
The low salary – £20 a month, £30 in the field.
Wife to live on £3 a week in England.
Frobenius ‘behaved very badly’ – what did he do?
3 July. Nellie’s last day at the Kardomah. She got £5 a week part-time and had cleared the tables for 22 years. In the heat of June her remark to a man customer ‘Oh, look at you perspiring’. The Kardomah closed July 3rd 1970.
Novel. Scene by scene. Write what researchers and biographers write of a person’s life and then what really did happen (rather like The Heroes of Clone [by Margaret Kennedy]). Or first write the short biography, then write it again filled out and true. Beginning, perhaps, in 1939.
29 May [by bus to Athens]. Belgium, Germany, Austria, Yugoslavia. People in the coach: Young loving couple – he slightly Che Guevara; Irish couple – lady had too many changes of clothing and wore unbecoming beige slacks; elderly couple – tough know-all man; Katharine Wilkinson and her father – very nice; ‘The wandering Scholar’ – slightly odd, had diarrhoea; the Old Roué – military type, always at the bottle; Olde World Edwardian man about town; Australian couple (she of Greek origin) with little boy; Chris and Marie – Cockney coupl
e.
3 June. Athens. Pension Penelope: It is a fine old house now somewhat in need of repair and redecoration. The inhabitants seem to be mostly elderly ladies, girl students and rather impoverished English tourists. A rather Katherine Mansfield sort of place – plastic bowls of washing soaking in the bathroom, eating in rooms, and every inhabitant has his or her own little corner of chaos. Our room has a stunning view of the Acropolis. A family of cats on the roof opposite.
4 June. In the evening we went to a taverna with Jock and Guido. Guido comes from Carrara and his family has a marble firm. Perhaps we could order our tombstones from him. When we got back to the Penelope I looked in my bag and saw that my passport wasn’t there! Horror!
5 June. Went to the British Consulate about the passport. ‘ I’m afraid this is going to ruin your holiday,’ said the man in a satisfied tone. I decided to go to places where I might have left it and finally ran it to earth in the American Express. Oh the relief!
Mycenae and Epidaurus. Found the Church of St Spyridon. There was an ikon of St Barbara (all silver) so I burned a candle to her as a thanks for finding my passport. Demoted she may be by Rome, perhaps, she is not by the Greek Orthodox.
